


Reveille!

by arcjet



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Comedy, Drug Use, F/M, Nora's a fiend, flying under the influence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 02:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20574617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcjet/pseuds/arcjet
Summary: The Prydwen's not the only thing flying high tonight.But seriously, who authorizes Neriah's experimental plants anyway?





	Reveille!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [followthefreedomtrail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/followthefreedomtrail/gifts).

> Dedicated to and written for @followthefreedomtrail because she was like "Maxson need some weed" and I was like "you're right". Please don't take this seriously, I just want my boy to relax for once in his life.

In retrospect, it was Neriah’s fault. 

Nora (perhaps presumptuously, though to be fair after several heavy-handed hints from her paladin during meal times and strength training) had assumed she’d receive promotion after her work at Fort Strong, and she’d been waiting on the meeting with the Elder for weeks now—but every time she had arrived, uniform pressed and chest puffed out, the Elder would dismiss her immediately with a bare apology. He’d insist on rescheduling, that some proctor or paladin or senior knight had something urgent to discuss—apologies, Initiate, I’ll send a scribe when there’s time—but she couldn’t help but feel as though she simply hadn’t accomplished enough.

So she’d taken it upon herself to visit all the proctors, begging for missions that could help her get that little insignia sewn onto the breast of her flight suit. Anything to feel like her enlistment hadn’t been some huge, farcical mistake. That she _ could _ fight like her husband had, that she _ could _ finally feel like she was a part of something.

Ingram had dismissed her immediately, obviously plagued with the same nonstop schedule as the Elder, and Quinlan had muttered something vague about documents before shooing her out of his office. Teagan would have been her last resort, if she hadn’t caught Neriah absentmindedly chewing on the end of her ponytail one day at the end of the catwalk. They’d gotten onto the conversation of workloads, you know, as comrades in arms (and quills?) do, and Neriah had let it slip that she was working on Something Big, and I really need more specimen samples but everyone’s just so busy with the Institute, you know?

So Nora did what Nora does best: wormed her way into the scribe’s best graces, via an endless supply of blood samples. Ferals, mutants, even irradiated dogs—which Dogmeat seemed to protest, everytime she brought her combat knife up to the throat of another fallen canine—none were safe from Nora’s unhinged ambition. Neriah was just a senior scribe, sure, but she reported directly to Teagan and if the scatterbrained scientist were to let slip that Nora had single-handedly helped her develop whatever that Something Big was, well _ surely _ that would get her the stamp on her power armor and the colored band around her laser rifle. 

So, it was definitely Neriah’s fault. 

**19:23**

“Delivery,” Nora announces, the sack she had tied to Dogmeat rattling with fat vials as she unwinds the thick leather straps, plopping it satisfactorily onto the scribes’ workbench. “Fresh and labeled.”

“Properly?” Neriah asks, barely looking up from the mutant cadaver she’s engrossed in.

“To the best of my ability?” Nora says, uncertainly. She still can’t really tell the difference between a male and female molerat, despite being told several times, but the scribe seems to always figure it out in the end. 

“Mm. Teagan will put the caps in your locker at the end of the week,” Neriah says. 

_ And then tell the Elder what a great job I’ve been doing? _

“That’s probably enough samples for now. Storage is getting a little full.”

_ Oh. _

“Well,” Nora muses. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Neriah glances up from her specimen, pursing her lips. “Yeah, are you going by the incinerator? I’m trying to clear up some space for more grafts, but I haven’t had time to dump all the old experiments out yet.”

She points absentmindedly at a crinkled trash bag sitting on the table of lonely planters, before silently returning to her work. 

That’s _ good _, Nora tells herself, sweeping up the black plastic with one hand and marching off with as much pride as she could. She’s solved Neriah’s sample shortage, and surely there’s more proper fieldwork for her now. Everything is falling into place, and then she can rejoin Danse on all his classified missions with her new title, before really starting her work on saving the Commonwealth, and all that. 

Dogmeat woofs doubtfully as they stand before the incinerator. 

“I didn’t ask, boy,” Nora sighs. Reluctantly, she reaches into the garbage and tosses a biohazard bag into the flames. The heat devours its meal greedily, blackening the matching sickly yellow of the plastic and showing gratuity through a waft of burnt hair, before receding back and awaiting more. One by one, she pulls more trash out of the bag and throws it into the incinerator, until it’s nearly empty and the entire bottom deck smells verifiably like, well, burning shit.

The last piece of junk is a grimy paper satchel, bottom soggy from a pool of wet soil she can feel through the wrapping. One blue leaf pokes out the top, and Nora pauses. 

“There’s no fucking way,” she says out loud, before pressing her lips together. She considers her options for about a millisecond, before unsheathing the plant entirely, scattering dirt across the metal floors. Then, before she can stop herself, she repeats, “There’s absolutely no fucking way.”

Nora knows exactly what she’s holding in her hand, and the dull shock she feels is more that she’s found it at the bottom of Neriah’s trash, rather than in some UV-lit backroom of Hancock’s state house. Glowing and wilted from its hours out of soil, sure, but nonetheless instantly recognizable, if not by its pointed leaves, then by the familiar scent of hazy afternoons in Nora’s dorm room, over two centuries ago.

“Ruh-roh,” Dogmeat remarks.

_ Ruh-roh, indeed. _

“Am I hallucinating?” Nora asks, looking helplessly between the old plant and her canine companion, then around the empty incineration room, as if to check for witnesses. It had definitely been illegal before the war, though that hadn’t really stopped anybody—but she isn’t entirely sure of its status now.

Well, at least to Neriah, it’s just a failed experiment. 

It’s another millisecond of thought before she picks off the buds and shoves them into Dogmeat’s satchel. Then she straightens, swept the fallen dirt back into the paper bag, shoves the gnarly roots into the fire, and slams the incinerator closed.

“Don’t snitch,” she tells her friend.

“Woof,” he replies.

**20:01**

Danse probably thinks she’s insane with the sheer velocity of the bear hug she embraces him with when she catches him eating dinner in the mess hall later that evening. 

Her excitement can probably be attributed to seeing her paladin for the first time in months, but it’s mostly rooted in the five delectable buds she’s stowed away in her footlocker. She had tried to assuage her guilt, because that would mean she knew what she was doing was wrong, but... it’s not like she actually had the means to do anything with it. 

It’s just a fun keepsake, really.

“There’s exciting news,” Danse announces, as soon as Nora’s tray hits the table. “Elder Maxson asked me to inform you that you’re expected tomorrow morning.”

“You saw him?” Nora asks, less exhilarated than Danse had expected, if the look of disappointment on his face is any indication. She pokes at her food sullenly. “You’ve been gone for weeks.”

“It was just a mission report,” Danse replies. He’s being gentle and understanding, as usual, but it does little to raise Nora’s sudden change in mood. 

“Maybe if I had any missions to report,” Nora retorts. Then she looks up, sees Danse’s raised eyebrows, and sighs. “Sorry.”

“You’ll get used to them soon enough,” Danse comforts. “You might even get sick of them, knowing you.”

“Me? Getting sick of Brotherhood protocol? Never.” Her paladin’s eyes twinkle slightly, which is probably the closest she’ll ever get to laugh out of him, and she offers a small, sly smile in return. “So, what was your mission, anyway?”

The twinkle disappears abruptly. “That’s classified.”

“Well, if it’s going to be unclassified tomorrow morning, you might as well—”

“It’s _ classified _,” Danse emphasizes. He stares at her sternly, lips set in a thin line as if to prevent any secrets from tumbling out. Impetuously, she holds his gaze, clutching her fork tightly in one hand, until her superior breaks away, patting down his pockets in an aggravated manner. It’s seemed to have set him in a bad mood, and she almost opens her mouth to apologize again. 

But to her surprise, he pulls out a pack of rolling papers and a crinkled carton of tobacco. 

“Are you smoking again?” She demands, though she’s half-intrigued. Once, after she had first met her paladin, burnt synth stench still strong but deep-range transmitter firmly in hand, he’d lit up a neatly rolled cigarette, then another, then another, before shoving a laser rifle in her face, mumbling something about a lack of caps. But every time subsequently when she’d offer him a wilted cigarette from her pack, he’d staunchly refuse. He’s a rather pious man, after all, and he was right about looted pre-War Grey’s tasting like mould.

“It’s been a long week,” Danse huffs, though he doesn’t make eye contact again. Instead, he sets about assembling his vice before scraping his chair back, tucking it behind his ear. “I’ll be back.”

“I’m snitching,” she calls out in reply. Then her eyes land on the papers, and it’s about a full millisecond of consideration before she plucks out a few for herself.

She glances around the mess hall to see if anyone has caught her minor theft, before realizing that it wouldn’t even matter. It’s common enough that the soldiers’ recreational lounge was littered with half-smoked cigarettes and empty beer bottles, and this is kind of the same thing. 

Right?

**20:32**

Dogmeat is waiting for her at the foot of her bed when she returns to her quarters, and happily chows down on the leftover mirelurk stew she offers him. 

“There’s another surprise,” Nora informs him, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her stolen papers, fanning them out like a deck of cards. “We did it, boy!”

“Woof!” Dogmeat chants excitedly.

Fortunately, the shared female quarters are empty, and maybe on a different night she would have wallowed over the fact that every other person aboard the damn ship had work to do; but she had her own mission tonight, and it involved Danse’s papers, the least-rusty pair of scissors she could find, and the thickly scented leaves currently permeating within a one-foot perimeter around her bed.

It had been six months since she’d woken up, two centuries since she’d been put to sleep, and one year before that since she’d last touched the stuff—a victory blunt for passing the bar, actually, before she promptly got pregnant, thanks Nate!—but she fell into the familiarity of the routine quickly. At the height of college, she kept her nails long just so she could stuff joints until they were bursting at the seam, but her fingertips were calloused and trimmed short now. Not quite useless, but the tip of her tongue manages to poke out her mouth in concentration.

The first joint is crooked and uneven, but the second and third stare up at her proudly, looking damn near like Danse’s perfectly rolled cigarettes. Dogmeat sits on his hind legs next to where she’s kneeling at her side table, peering over her shoulder at her handiwork. He barks approvingly, wagging his tail and nipping her elbow.

“I know, right?” Nora exclaims, diving on top of the canine, happily scratching his ears. Having bore the brunt of Nora’s boredom-induced stress for the past few weeks, he immediately flops over onto his belly, paws drawn up near his chin.

“Woof!”

A beep at the shared terminal alerts her out of her contentment, and she springs into action as if she’s heard the RA’s footsteps steadily approaching, shoving everything into her drawer, loose leaves going back into her pack and slamming her footlocker closed. Saved for a rainy day.

At that moment, there wouldn’t be much that could properly shake Nora out of her bliss, so she cheerily opens her messages. She assumes it’s Danse reminding her of her strength training, now that he’s back, or some tedious ship-wide alert about closing doors. 

Initiate - we’ll need to reschedule tomorrow morning. I will send a scribe at a time that is suitable for both of us, as I expect you are keeping yourself busy.

Regards,   
Elder Maxson

“With fucking what?” Nora cries out, slamming the keyboard against the desk perhaps too aggressively, as the terminal blinks at her, before shutting off completely with a small electric fizz. “Fuck. _ Fuck _.”

Desperately, she tries the power button, but the black screen remains so, reflecting her irate expression back at herself. She shoves the entire desk backwards, and the metal clangs against the steel wall, rattling for a few extra seconds to draw out her frustration.

She resigns to sitting back in the chair, arms crossed tightly over her chest and mind spinning—she _ should _ call Quinlan for repairs, but the old geezer is probably sleeping, and she’d be indicted immediately. With her promotion being held at a constant arm’s length, she simply refuses to have anything against her until she can meet with the stupid Elder and get her stupid badge and get back out to the stupid field—

“Ruh-roh,” Dogmeat sighs, tilting his head up at the broken terminal. When she flicks her gaze towards him, he coos softly.

“What am I going to do, boy?” She asks, receding further into her chair. He shrugs in reply, before a lost sock catches his attention and he pounces upon it. 

Nora sighs. She’s clearly going insane, cabin fever and all that. Nate had remarked on her listlessness multiple times; he’d caught glimpses of it when they’d started dating, pencil tapping erratically against her study notes and knee bouncing against the shitty dorm desk as she studied for whatever exam. He’d experienced it in full during the last months of pregnancy, as she moped around the house, heavy-footed and bored out of her damn mind.

She manifests anxiety out of ennui. It keeps her motivated, had driven her through law school, but it catches up to her in the dark of night. Aside from finding _ something to do _, there was never much that could quell the nerves that build in her belly.

Well, except.

She pauses, sitting up in her chair slightly. Her eyeline is drawn first to Dogmeat, who’s currently going in for the kill on the lost sock, then travels up her bed and to her side table. 

It’s no consideration at all for her to open her drawer, rainy days be damned. On second thought, wouldn’t today be considered a rainy one?

She heads to the forecastle, contraband stored safely in her uniform pocket. 

**20:40**

And it hits her like a freight train.

“Ruh-roh,” Nora whispers, fingertips tingling. The forecastle had been chilly and sharp when she’d quietly meandered outside, but already, the harsh bite of the cold was fading away. Uselessly, she turns to Dogmeat, whose ears perk up with sudden alertness. “I’m way too fucking—”

**21:02**

“Hi.”

Nora is forced to a stop, right arm full of potato chip bags, left arm reaching for a Nuka-Cola. She knows this voice, can place it perfectly even as her mind is fading in and out and it sounds further away than it probably is. After all, she’s been waiting to hear it for six weeks, waiting for it to grant her a few words in particular.

Steeling herself, she turns, a furtive gaze landing on Dogmeat to _ not make a damn sound _, before she’s one-eightied and facing the Elder, who’s standing in front of the mess hall counter she’s currently behind, staring down at her.

“I’m high,” she greets mildy, hoping against hope that her words sound much more like _ um, hi _ as they leave her lips.

She’s only seen the Elder this close twice before, and she’s disappointed to learn that his imposing presence is not just a product of the observation deck’s ostentatious atmosphere, but also something the leader carries about himself. One hand in his pocket, the other resting casually against the counter, he raises one eyebrow, eyes darting between her armful of snacks and the tip of Dogmeat’s tail, wagging perfectly in view.

Stupid happy Dogmeat. He clearly had no respect for the gravity of the situation.

The silence seems to last an hour, though the ticking of the clock behind her indicates it’s only been an appropriate few seconds before Maxson speaks.

“What are you doing?”

“Food,” Nora replies dumbly. She shakes herself, desperately trying to evacuate the haze out of her brain. She wonders faintly if she should have reconsidered smoking a failed experimental plant found in the bottom of a trash bag—but she had been _ so _ sure. 

And desperate. She’d been quite desperate.

Maybe it’s the radiation that’s getting to her, she hopes, sinking down against the stiff railing. It had been a while, too, she contemplates, and maybe her tolerance had gone down over the centuries? Her first cup of hot coffee in the wasteland had sent her jitters down her spine, when she could barely operate after three before the war. She’d been high plenty of times in her life—hell, even before taking the bar—but either her memory had been trashed by the ice box or this was definitely the highest she’d ever been.

It’s a few moments before she realizes the Elder is still waiting for her.

“Dog food,” she clarifies, and skepticism colors her own words as the potato chips rustle in her arms. Dogmeat barks excitedly at her promise, leaping up and placing his paws on the counter, just inches away from Maxson’s gloved hands. “For Dogmeat, my dog. That’s him.”

She gestures vaguely with her free hand towards her canine friend, who pushes his nose against Maxson’s unmoving knuckles before returning, dramatically wilted, to her side. 

“We’ve met,” Maxson says dryly. His hand is tucked safely back into his pocket, though Nora doesn’t miss the quick wipe onto the side of his jacket. “Does the commissary know you take extra rations for your...companion?”

Nora blinks.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I mean, um, usually. They’ll give me some extra food to take back to him—but, uh, he’s just been so peckish lately! I think he’s going through another growth spurt, or—”

She pauses to swallow, and her throat is unbearably dry, her hastily-cobbled together lies having evaporated all the moisture. Dogmeat peers up her, quite obviously fully grown, and tilts his head to the side, waiting for his promised snack. Though she means to continue, her mind spins again—and it really comes in waves, doesn’t it?—and her focus turns towards keeping her upright. 

“Right.” The Elder looks off to the side, though there’s nothing there, but Nora can feel the awkwardness he’s trying to avoid hang in the air like a thick cloud. She wonders if she’s acting as strange as she feels, and maybe he’ll just toss her off the side of the airship for breaking Brotherhood rules, and maybe that would be the best outcome of her current situation. Because she’s pretty certain that if she somehow makes it out of this trap of a mess hall, metal floors suctioned to the bottom of her boots and frozen behind the rusty counter, she’ll never be able to look her Elder in the eye again anyway.

“You canceled our meeting,” she blurts out, and her thoughts swirl around in her skull for a moment to catch up to her lips. She would probably clap her hand over her mouth if she had any control over her limbs, but her arms are somewhere in the vacuum of space and the tingling has crept up to her chest.

Somewhere in the ship, a metal door clangs shut, and it’s just enough for Nora to stabilize herself, if momentarily. Maxson’s looking at her again, and he looks far less frightening than he had a second ago. A distant gaze has replaced his austere stare, and somewhere beneath that, he almost looked apologetic.

“Yes, I—something came up,” he mutters, scratching his beard absentmindedly. It’s a relatively innocuous action, but the sobering clang already has already dissipated from Nora’s mind and she accidentally hones in on it, and then down the length of his sleeve which is littered with dried blood and burn marks.

All of the sudden, he’s frightening again.

“It’s fine,” Nora says amicably. She tries for a weak smile, leaning back against the counter to casually steady herself. “I expect you’re keeping yourself busy”—_ fuck, that’s exactly what he’d written in his email _—”uh, being the Elder and all?”

There’s a hint of a smirk on his lips and it’s beyond Nora’s current grip on reality to decipher it.

“I suppose I have,” he states simply. His gaze flicks towards the clock behind her, then down to Dogmeat, and back to her—and she just as quickly averts her eyes when she realizes his are blue. She doesn’t know why this is important but she dwells on it as he continues. “Though it’s a simple matter to discuss. Are you free now?”

Nora blinks. “Free of what?” 

The paranoia sets in almost immediately. Sobriety? Drugs? Experimental plants that, maybe on the one-hundredth consideration, were probably contaminated with rotting specimen flesh and chemical carcinogens?

“Work and canine obligations,” Maxson clarifies, and Nora lets out a sigh of relief.

The world has stopped waving around her momentarily, and she can kind of feel her fingertips again. She nods with determination, hands her potato chips to Dogmeat, and follows the sweep of the Elder’s coat down the hall.

**21:08**

It’s the distant creak of the Elder’s bedroom door that makes her realize she is definitely still too high, and her momentary collapse into near-sobriety had clearly been the result of pure fight-or-flight adrenaline, rushing through her definitely irradiated, incomprehensibly stoned blood. How humans had evolved so far on the crux of the two stupidest decisions to make when faced with adversity is simply unbeknownst to her.

There’s another creak, and Nora realizes that the door is not distant at all, but rather less than a foot away from her, and Maxson is on the other side, staring down at her expectantly as she tried to sort through her muddled thoughts.

_ You’re so fucked _, Nora sighs to herself sadly.

Once she has crossed the menacing border of the Elder’s doorway, he switches on the light. It flickers unsteadily before shining bright and overwhelming and directly into her pupils, and she squints against the intensity, struggling gracelessly to plant her ass into a chair he’s pulled out.

Maxson shrugs off his coat and tosses it casually across his desk, crouching down before his filing cabinet to unlock the bottom drawer and returning to her proximity with a single sheet of paper. When he takes his seat, it’s whisked away from her prying eyes 

Nora quickly averts her gaze away from his rarely-seen forearms. Not quickly enough to avoid the sight of several mismatched scars running up the length of it, accompanied by various patches of bleached and shiny skin, where burnt hair follicles refused to grow.

She tries not to dwell on it.

“Paladin Danse probably hasn’t hid it very well,” Maxson sighs, shuffling through a variety of folders on his desk, “But the proctors have discussed it, and you are due for a promotion. Knight, fieldwork...Danse will still be your mentor, of course—”

“Of course,” Nora repeats aimlessly, before she covers her mouth with her palm. Maxson looks up at the interruption, and it takes everything within Nora not to shrink back and _ please, just throw me off the Prydwen now _—“Um, Danse might have mentioned it. I don’t know...been keeping myself busy, you know?”

She winces again when she repeats verbatim what he had written to her, but Maxson doesn’t seem to take notice. She takes it upon herself to erase the phrase from her mind entirely, you know, before it gets weird—has it gotten weird already?—but the more she focuses on it, the harder the words burn in her mind.

Then she realizes Maxson has been speaking this whole time, and struggles to latch on to his words. 

“And here, and here,” he concludes, sliding the paper over to her side of the desk, along with a rather innocuous looking pen. Then she had to spend a moment dwelling on why any pen would be innocuous, before deciding that she had just assumed Maxson would have been the type to have one of those ornate fountain pens. All hand-engraved and embossed, like the one the head of the law firm she’d worked at had had, but wait, she’s in the wasteland, and that would be stupid—

And he’s staring at her again. Concern flits across his face. 

“Can you read?”

A heavy blush sets in on her cheeks, carrying with it a substantial weight that causes her to bow her head slightly. The back of her neck prickles and she blurts out her fumbled reply: “I—yes. I mean, of course. Why wouldn’t I? Be able to.”

She blinks and looks at the form. It is definitely within her capabilities to read, though in her current state, comprehension may be a bigger concern. The words on the page seem to breathe, and she re-reads the headers multiple times before she’s certain she’s got it right. She picks up the pen with as much confidence as she can muster, squinting at the spaces left clear from Maxson’s neat, slanted handwriting.

He sits back with the slightest indication of relief. “It’s admirable that literacy was standard during your time.” Then he adds, “We often forget to take that into consideration with wasteland recruits.”

Nora nods, though her focus is wholly absorbed in deciphering the dense jargon displayed in front of her. Carefully, she swirls her initials through outlined boxes, before scratching the date at the bottom of the paper.

She used to be good at this.

Maxson’s chair is scraped back, calling her attention towards him, and he flashes her some teeth in some attempt at a smile. “Well, I suppose this calls for a bit of celebration,” he announces, and he procures a bottle of dark liquor that’s nearly empty. She wonders if her absence would have still found him finishing it off, as it does in the two glasses he’s placed on the table. 

She stares as Maxson drains half his drink in one sip. She’s under enough influence as it is, but her immobilization is more stationed in the view in front of her. The Elder has relaxed, less rigid in his posture with one elbow on the table. Devoid of his jacket and his list of commands and the clinical atmosphere of the observation deck, he’s nearly—

Approachable?

It’s unnerving, to say the least. And downright disarming, if she’s being completely honest with herself. And for once, she doesn’t think it’s the weed talking. Or thinking, or whatever. 

Nora recedes visibly in her seat.

“It’s technically not official until all the proctors sign off on your promotion,” Maxson is saying. “I’ll send it through tomorrow morning. By the end of the week, you’ll be a knight.”

She manages a smile.

“Then you can join Paladin Danse on his missions,” he continues, and the glass he brings to his lips comes down emptied. “You’re a lucky soldier. His work for the Brotherhood is unmatched. It’ll reflect well on you for the rest of your career."

Another bottle is brought down, accompanied by a silver-plated lighter which clinks against the wood. The Elder is shuffling around his cabinets, letting out a short grunt, before checking his pockets with a sigh.

“Do you—”

“—smoke?” Nora cut in. He nods, and wordlessly, Nora slides her pack of Grey’s across the table, before frowning. There had been something about the pack that she had tried to keep on the forefront of her mind, but she couldn’t quite remember. Her body seems to know despite her brain’s delay, palms sweating as one rough hand reaches down and plucks it off the table. 

He lets out a sharp exhale through his nose when he flips open her pack. 

“I didn’t realize you hand rolled,” he chuckles. 

Something clicks at the back of Nora’s mind.

“I don’t,” she says mildly, and watches with frozen alarm as the Elder—_ of the fucking Brotherhood of Steel _—brought one of her perfectly-rolled joints up to his mouth, one eyebrow raising at her at her remark. “I mean I do? I mean—”

She scrambles for the pockets of her uniform, patting them down erratically for another pack, another anything, maybe even a knife just so she can kill herself before watching the Elder—_ and that’s her boss _—light it with all the ease of someone who thinks they’re not about to inhale the crumpled leaves of an irradiated, hallucinogenic plant that was inexplicably revived by a mad scientist two hundred years and one nuclear war after its extinction.

Cut with rusty scissors, to boot.

A million consumers rights law fly through her head at once—what’s advertised must be the price and product most visibly detailed on the packaging, what’s requested must fit the consumer’s expectations to the best of the seller’s ability—_ now’s not the goddamn time _—but her pockets turn up empty of anything to replace the contraband which is already smoking between the Elder’s lips and she falls silent, every nerve-ending firing off in her body with panic. 

The Grey’s pack returns to the table emptied.

“Are you okay?” Maxson asks.

Under the table, Nora’s hands have formed tight fists.

“I have to tell you something,” she blurts out, and when he looks up at her only one thought is in her head—_ absolutely not, you’re not telling him _—and she collapses back into her seat again. “I, um. I broke the terminal in the barracks.”

Not much better. 

But he takes in her confession over a drag of the not-cigarette, sitting back down with an impassive expression. Nora glances down at the form, still in front of her on his desk, and winces as the distinct scent of not-tobacco wafts between them. Maxson coughs slightly, and she looks back up with trepidation.

Maxson shrugs.

“If I had to demote everyone who trashed the communal terminal over a Dear John letter, I’m afraid I’d have no soldiers left on the field,” Maxson says dryly. “Inform Quinlan. He’ll send someone to fix it.”

Nora had braced herself for a swift reprimand, and her shoulders locked into place when the release she was expecting didn’t come. She’s left in a state of confused hysteria, eyes bouncing back and forth between the Elder and the veins bulging out of her wrists with tension. And air, simple oxygen, was suddenly a chore to inhale.

Maxson diverts her attention again with another cough. 

“This is stronger than I’m used to,” he admits. “Did Paladin Danse get you onto these?”

“Um,” Nora begins, grasping for a lie to bring to her lips. “I’ve been smoking since high school. But I think, you know, Danse could be on to something, about old Grey’s tasting like—”

“Mould,” Maxson finished. He lets out a sudden, harsh, laugh, before looking confused at the sound. Then, as if to cover it all up, he reaches out for his glass, and misses it by a few centimeters.

Nora can’t watch. She _ shouldn’t _ watch, really, but she’s captivated by the glittering whiskey reflecting the harsh lights, and she needs to focus on literally anything else in her vicinity so she doesn’t catch the Elder’s eyes as they begin to glaze over. 

His hand travels slowly, painfully, carefully, to the left, where it settles on the base, and Maxson considers it for a moment, pressing his lips together.

“Anyway,” Nora says immediately, forcibly unclenching her fingers and gripping at her knees in preparation. Half a minute passes in silence, and Nora can feel the Elder’s eyes settling on her. It appears to take another hour for him to raise the glass to his lips, and she can hear the gulp and thud, solidifying his realization and agitating hers.

“That wasn’t a cigarette, was it,” Maxson states, slowly. 

“Um,” Nora stammers, and she’s already pushing her chair back, the loss of stability against her legs leaving her uneasy on her feet. “I should leave.”

He opens his mouth to reply, and when he can’t quite muster it, he simply nods.

Nora flees.


End file.
